Tired of enchanting being a mindless skill grind with no rewards or replay value? Botheredby how those half-dozen banish-enchanted daggers ruined the economy for the rest of yourplay-through? Have tried all the other enchanting mods out there but found them lacking?Then welcome, fellow essence-seeker — you've finally arrived where you belong.

...........Enchanting Awakened: The Quick List of Features....................*.Choose the path you will follow from among three distinct Enchanting styles — Aether, Chaos, and Corpus —.......................each suited to unique playing styles and designed to allow multiple play-throughs with different characters........................Each of the three styles gain bonuses to the enchantments that are aligned with their particular path.

....................*.Gain enchanting experience when trapping souls, and unlock special "Essence" perks that add exciting new.......................features to soul trapping. Soul trapping is now of central importance to Enchanting, as Skyrim lore suggests.

....................*.Unlocking perks is now necessary to disenchant more powerful items, trap larger souls, and improve.......................the number of charges your enchantments yield (charges are much more limited to begin with now).

....................*.Experience completely restructured enchanting mechanics: gold values have been reduced, enchantment.......................magnitudes have been rebalanced, and enchantments now scale at their own unique rates — some (like Regen.......................and Carry enchantments) increasing much faster and to significantly higher magnitudes than in vanilla Skyrim.

....................*.Revel in the Skyrim you've grown to love — all has been carefully designed with the aim of enhancing Enchanting.......................with new layers of complexity and excitement, while avoiding any undesirable immersion-breaking changes.

....................*.Enjoy options that allow you to globally modify the power of all enchantments, to a level that YOU.......................envision to be right for your character, as well as a system that has been optimized behind the scenes.......................to take you beyond level 100, if you are among those who play with a skill uncapper activated.

....................*.COMPATIBLE with SkyRe, Requiem, SPERG, ACE, and lots of other stuff - see the sticky post.

Channel the unimaginable forces of the stars as you seek the secret of limitless energy andunbound magical power. The elusive Aether is your medium, and the invisible transferenceof all soul energies and essences are your domain. Manipulate sound and silence, light anddarkness, reality and the ethereal planes - terrorizing foes with the unspeakable and unseen.

Enlist the forces of Chaos in your quest to warp souls, unleashing unimaginable power.Destruction is both your preferred means and your desired end, and you will do all thatyou can to bring the world to its knees before you. Steal, poison, swindle, and strikeyour foes down with a fluid and fiery rage unmatched by any other enchanter.

Train your body and mind to resonate in perfect consonance, and become an impenetrablefortress of stored soul energies. Strengthening and restoring the purity of the naturalworld with your iron willpower and unmatched attunement to the inner harmonies ofthe body itself, you stand in judgement before all that is perverse and evil in the world.

Enchanting AwakenedThe Essence Perks

Trapping Souls is deeply enmeshed in Skyrim's Enchanting lore, and Enchanting Awakened's Essence Perks are designed to reassertthis central importance of Soul Trapping to the Enchanting system. Each Essence Perk represents the unique intersection of twoenchanting schools, and has profound effects on a character's style of trapping souls to be used for binding to enchantments.

Will you follow the path of Chaos, recklessly trapping the greatest number and variety of souls, then hastilybinding them to your enchantments with little concern for how they might be more efficiently put to use?

Will you choose the respectful path of Corpus, shunning the capture of human souls entirely, and carefullyextracting every last bit of essence from creatures as part of your reverence for the forces of nature?

Or will you favor the path of Aether, absorbing the most energy possible from any source that you find,prideful of your command of all souls, unconcerned for your victims or the methods used to enslave them?

(You can see the in-game notifications better if you watch in fullscreen)

(You can see the in-game notifications better if you watch in fullscreen)

(You can see the in-game notifications better if you watch in fullscreen)

Enchanting AwakenedAdditional Notes and Things to Know

Extended List of Features & Vanilla Fixes

All previously obtained Enchanting tree perks will be automatically respec'd upon installation, and the perk points will be returned to your character to use in the new tree. (Also true for the SkyRe, Requiem, & SPERG versions if you've invested into any of their Enchanting trees).

The Fortify Magic & Regen enchantment has been rebuilt from the ground up, and it will now add a regen bonus scaled to your current enchantment level when worn. This allows the enchantment to provide much higher levels of Magicka Regen at high skill levels. Unfortunately the exact regen % cannot be shown in the item description as a result, but can be viewed in the magic effects window, or an optional message can be turned on to display it whenever you equip an item enchanted with this (see the Settings section below).

The Fortify Barter enchantment has been replaced by Fortify Persuasion. Instead of simply increasing selling prices, the new enchantment gives a straight bonus to all Speech skills, resulting in not only better prices, but improved persuasion and intimidation success.

A new enchantment, Fortify Speed, has been added. It will increase movement speed by about 30-70% depending on your skill level. This addition seemed necessary to balance the Chaos school with the other two, as I couldn't decide on an "exclusive" armor enchantment to limit only to Chaos. I plan to eventually add one or two more unique enchantments to this mod (Aether will be the next school I toss a bone to), though I am going to limit new enchantments to a small handful at most.

A completely rewritten Soul Trap script is integrated into the mod: with the exception of Azura's Star, soul gems will no longer accept souls of a smaller size than they are intended to hold. Black soul gems & the Black Star will now only capture human souls, as they should. Also, your followers will now be able to capture souls correctly if given the appropriate soul gems and a Soul Trap weapon.

A highly recommended soul gem scarcity plugin is also available, which can be activated in the MCM menu. The plugin will will replace 80% of the filled soul gems sold by vendors with empty gems instead, to further promote the use and importance of soul trapping in the game.

Most enchantments now scale at their own custom rates, instead of all enchantments being exactly 3 times stronger than their base magnitude when you reach level 100 (as in vanilla). Some will scale more slowly, and some will improve faster and reach much higher values (Magicka Regen scales to about 10 times its base value, for instance). This should keep almost all enchantments relevant even at higher levels.

The Power of some enchantments has been decreased. This is intended mostly for the purpose of promoting game balance and eliminating vanilla flukes, like the ability to reduce casting cost to zero (now impossible with the default settings) or the ability to use smithing and alchemy enchantments to vastly improve potions and smithed items.

Weapon enchantments have noticeably less charges to begin with. This more realistically reflects your skill level and promotes the use of Soul Trap to keep weapons charged (at lower levels especially). Your choice of specialization will affect how much your charge yield increases. Chaos enchanters will find that they burn through charges more quickly, for instance — representing their fiery nature — but they also have the most impressive arsenal of powerful weapon enchantments at their disposal. Skilled enchanters produce significantly more charges for enchantments aligned with their specialty.

You will be unable to use enchanted items before unlocking the required perks. Weapon enchantments simply wont affect your enemies, and armor enchantments will stop working a few seconds after you equip them. You will gain access to almost all enchantments simply by unlocking all three Soul Shaper perks (find a list of what each rank of that perk unlocks in the section below, "Gaining Access to Enchantments")

The Silent Moons Enchantment has been fixed. It didn't do any damage in vanilla. (The Unofficial Patch also fixes this, if you have it)

Bound Weapons now have the proper Soul Trap visual effects after you unlock the Soul Stealer perk. It actually looks like you're absorbing the soul!

A visual projectile has been added to the Soul Trap spell, something that was also missing from vanilla Skyrim. (Now also fixed by the Unofficial Patch)

Extra Enchanting experience will be awarded when disenchanting weapons. In vanilla, disenchanted weapons already gave less experience than armor generally, but after this mod's price rebalancing, weapons give extremely little experience. To compensate, you will be awarded extra experience when disenchanting weapons to bring them more in line with armor, BUT that experience will not show up immediately in the experience bar until you enchant or disenchant another item. Unfortunately this minor cosmetic issue can't be fixed. You can disable the extra experience in the MCM menu if this bothers you, however.

Adjustable Settings

You can adjust many of the mod's settings in the MCM menu. However, for anyone who doesn't have SKSE/SkyUI installed for the MCM features, you can still adjust some of EA's settings through the console. Get the details here.

Gaining Access to Enchantments

Each enchantment requires a particular perk in order to be used & to be disenchanted in Enchanting Awakened. Without the right perk, weapon enchantments will not affect your enemies, and armor enchantments will automatically dispel or fade when worn. However, almost every enchantment will be usable & disenchantable after you've unlocked all three ranks of the first perk, Soul Shaper. There are six more enchantments — two for each "school" of enchanting — that are only available to specialists in that particular school (the ones listed as "Exclusives" in the school descriptions above). Here is a list of which enchantments each rank of Soul Shaper unlocks:

Perk Tree Notes

It is currently impossible to specialize in more than one style of enchanting in Enchanting Awakened. However, the first three ranks of the starter perk for each enchanting style remain available to anyone, regardless of specialization. Thus, you can choose to unlock the Aether Seeker, Chaos Disciple, and Corpus Scholar perks - up to rank three, at any time.Perks that are above those basic starter perks in the tree will only be available to specialists of their associated style. Once you have taken any of the style-specific perks beyond the original starter perks, you will be committed to the style of the perk you choose for the rest of your play-through. For version two of Enchanting Awakened (in the works now), I will most likely implement an MCM menu option that will allow you to respec your perks if you decide you want to change styles, and I am also considering whether allowing specialization in multiple trees might be possible or desirable.

Compatibility & Installation

:: Incompatibilities ::An effort has been made to ensure that Enchanting Awakened alters only elements of the game related to Enchanting and Soul Trapping, to best ensure compatibility with other mods. However, Enchanting Awakened makes tweaks to just about every detail related to those things, so ANYTHING that alters Enchanting or Soul Trap in significant ways will be likely to conflict. If you must use EA in combination with other enchanting mods, it is recommended to put EA later in your load order to ensure the best possible result. See the Sticky Post for a comprehensive list of all known compatibilities and incompatibilities with other mods (click on the "Posts" tab at the top of the page). I will do my best to create patches for interesting & popular mods where possible.

:: Known Bugs ::All bugs have been terminated. Be prepared for a smooth ride.

:: Installation ::An installer is included that is compatible with Nexus Mod Manager, Mod Organizer, and Wrye Bash (Fomod/BAIN compatible). The installer will allow you to choose from a number of options and plugins. If you prefer to manually install, take a look at the included readme to find the right esp or plugins to install for your preferences.

WARNING: Installing the mod while your character has the Soul Trap spell equipped, or while Soul Trap is actively affecting targets nearby will result in Soul Trap no longer working after installation. Exit combat & unequip the spell before you install.

Uninstallation

IMPORTANT!

As is true of any mod, it is never recommended to uninstall in the middle of a characterplay-through. However, if you do decide that you would like to uninstall Enchanting Awakened,follow these steps carefully to ensure you make a clean removal of the mod:

...............* Go somewhere that does not have any enchanting tables or soul gem traps in the loaded area. A................. good place to uninstall would be indoors inside a shop without an enchanting table, for instance................* Unequip ALL enchanted items that you are wearing or wielding. It is okay for them to remain................. in your inventory, just ensure they are unequipped................* Either go into the MCM Menu (if you've installed it) and choose the option to Uninstall the mod, or................. else open the console with the tilde key (~), type StartQuest EAUninstall and close the console (~)................* Click the "Uninstall" button in the window that pops up. You will see some uninstall notifications................* Wait at least 60 seconds. Now save the game. Shut down Skyrim and uninstall Enchanting Awakened.................. If you are using NMM or Mod Organizer, these programs should be able to properly uninstall the mod................. on their own. Otherwise, be sure you've completely removed the esp and bsa files from your directory.................. After uninstalling, restart Skyrim and load the save you just made. Make a new save and overwrite................. the first one. This is your clean save. Now restart Skyrim once more. You will now be able to................. continue playing from your clean save with no problems.

WARNING: Not Following These Instructions Will Break Enchanting Tables For Your Character !!!

Recommendations

Enchanting Tweaks:

Enchantment Reload Fix - Fixes problems associated with player-made enchantments after game reload. At higher enchanting levels especially, your player-enchanted weapons will consume charges much faster after game load, and the gold value of these items also jumps significantly higher.

NPC Enchantments Fix - A SkyProc patcher that will fix all followers and NPCs so that they can completely benefit from any type of enchanted gear. Without a patch like this, many enchantments don't work for your followers, like Fortify One-handed, Fortify Block, Fortify Destruction, and others. A necessity for those of you who like to deck out your follower with awesome gear!

Cherrywood Dragon Enchanting Table - Another great retexture including a dragon skull holding a soul gem right in the middle. It's very red, so it would work great for a Chaos enchanter!

..Other Skill Tweaks and Overhauls:

Elys' Community Uncapper (Requires SKSE) — Install this and never look back. Removes the 100 level limit from skills, allowing you to set your own new custom limits. But more importantly, also allows you to set the rate of experience gain for every individual skill, amount of health, stamina, magicka & perk points gained each level, and more. Enchanting Awakened is designed to accommodate Enchanting skill gain beyond level 100, allowing you to gain better bonuses to your Essence Perks in particular.

Stealth Skills Rebalanced — AMAZING, highly underrated mod. Choose to install any combination of its Sneak, Lockpicking, and/or Pickpocketing skill overhauls. All of them are fabulous. The lockpicking module in particular and its fewer lockpicks plug-in is a stroke of genius — made me finally appreciate the value of Lockpicking perks, and left me often wishing that I had more lockpicks left at crucial moments. Please Note that the stealth module of this mod requires a PATCH to work with Enchanting Awakened (available in the files section)

Path of Shadows — Another very good Sneak overhaul. Has some of the funnest and most creative perks I've seen in a custom tree, including the ability to jump backwards to evade attacks, and the ability to knock people out for long durations — "blackjack" them (while you rob their house, for example). My one reservation is that the sneak multipliers are a bit high, making sneak attacks overpowered at high skill levels (I lowered these on my own version for personal playthrough). If you don't mind that, when this mod is good, it's REALLY good. And worth a try.

Phitt's Alchemy & Food Overhaul — Still one of the best alchemy balance mods out there. It has its shortcomings — like potion prices that seem too low — but its complete removal of enchanting, smithing, and other secondary skill potions from the game has always been a highlight for me, and this feature works well to balance things in combination with Enchanting Awakened.

Miko's Alchemy & Food Overhaul — props to MidnightBreezy for pointing this one out, a sort of "spiritual successor" to Phitt's. Features vary a bit between the two mods, but they are both as fantastic as they are comprehensive!

ACE Combat & Skill Mods — A wonderful mod that is always somewhere in my load order, especially because of its modular nature, which lets you choose only to modify the skills that you want to change, and therefore allows you to use ACE modules in combination with many other great skill mods (like Enchanting Awakened, or the mods in this list!)

Treebalance - Speech Tree — One of the few good Speech skill overhauls out there. Subtle but very effective changes to the perk tree. Also introduces a yielding system which adds to roleplay enjoyment if you aren't the sort of person who wants to kill everyone in sight.

The ThirdRace Skill Overhaul - Modular — A very nice, little known reconstruction of numerous skill trees. Modular so you can choose to change only the skills you want, and you'll inevitably find at least one skill tree in this impressive bunch that will catch your eye. The speech tree with its heavy emphasis on empowering shouts is particularly interesting if you're the sort who relies heavily on your Thu'um.

....And finally.... BIG thanks going out to all the kind people over at Beth's CK forums for constant support and insight: Inki, mojo, MrJack,s7o, hypno, B1gBad, CDM_, JustinOther, heilghast, and many other folks I'm definitely forgetting. A truly fantastic group.